sermons

Summer at Reservoir

Three Things to Remember with Every New Beginning

Steve Watson

Aug 31, 2025

In 1976, back when I was just three years old, I started a new school year for the first time. And for the next 36 years, I kept going back this time of year – first as a student, and then as an educator. 

When I became a pastor here in 2013, I stopped going back to school every fall. But I’ve kept sending kids back to school this time of year, and this year, our oldest kiddo is even starting her career as a public school educator itself, so for me, the start of September isn’t just the beginning of shorter days and sweater weather and apple picking, but it’s back to school season. It’s the start of something new!

I feel it in my bones.

I’m not alone in this city. Here in Cambridge, we’re in a college town. In Greater Boston, hundreds of thousands of college and university students start or resume their higher education. Hundreds of thousands more children start or go back to their primary and secondary schools, and many tens of thousands of educators start a new year as well. 

Raise your hand if it’s back to school time for you as a student or as an educator?

Keep your hands up. We’ve got a special time of prayer and blessing for all of you coming right after this sermon – our first year joining the Blessing of the Backpacks tradition many churches have adopted. Can’t wait.

Keep those hands up please. And parents of kids going back to school, can we see your hands too?

And people starting other new things in your life that may not be about school – new homes or new leases, as it’s moving weekend in our city?

New jobs, new anything, in a new season of life?

So many of us!

Well friends, my hope today is to share a word – three words really – for all those of us who are going back to school as well as all those of us have anything new going on. 

I’ve called this sermon “Three Things for Every New Beginning,” and if your life is all same old-same old usual right now, I hope you’ll tuck something away in your heart and mind today for down the road when you need it. 

Alright? Let’s pray and get into it.

“Our God of new beginnings, ground us today is what’s true and what’s real, that we can be people of courage and hope in every new beginning. Amen.”

So first:

• God loves every good beginning, even little ones. 

Here’s our first scripture. From the prophet Zechariah:

Zechariah 4:10 (New Living Translation)

10 Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”

I don’t remember all of my 37 back to school years equally well, but one I remember really well was 2010, my first year as a high school principal. The local paper had done a story on me that summer – and in my interview, I talked about how excited I was for the school year to begin.

But then when it did, and when the teachers and students all came back to school, I remember being so nervous too.

One of the things I did as a new principal was set up these Friday lunches for seniors in my office. And I remember putting a sign up sheet for these lunches on my office door, and very few students signed up, and so I walked around the cafeteria recruiting students to come have lunch with me. And I felt like, oh my goodness, what if no one here even wants to sit and eat with me and talk? And what if they hired the wrong person, and I’m no good at this job? What if I can’t solve any of this school’s problems or make things better at all? 

But at the same time, I was excited. I was excited to have an office for the first time ever, an office with its own bathroom even! And I was excited to make a difference in kids and family’s lives, to help the education they got in this school be a little more interesting, and a little more relevant, and a little more kind and humane along the way. I was excited for all the folks I’d meet and for the special kind of unpredictable, kind of intense buzz that a high school has when it’s full of people and problems and possibilities. 

And I thought maybe we’ll all do some special things here together!

It’s normal in new beginnings to feel kind of scared or kind of excited, or sometimes kind of both at the same time. And you know even God gets excited about new beginnings. Because God is a God of hope and of possibilities. God is always curious about the next best thing God can help us make possible. 

Here, in the passage I took the verse from, it’s a construction project, after the ancient Jews had returned from captivity and exile in Persia. After decades of national calamity since their nation and temple and lives had all been destroyed, they’re just starting to rebuild.

And with all that trauma in their memories and in their bodies, they’re just getting started on reconstructing their new temple. Zerubabbel, the governor of Judea, has got that little tool in his hand, trying to get the first foundation and walls laid straight. And maybe the work seems so big, so hard, maybe so impossible. But the spirit of God is like:

hey, you’ve started. And that’s exciting.

Because any time you start something new, no matter how it’s going, no matter how it feels, you have courage. And courage is beautiful. 

And who knows what good things can happen with this new beginning? So even if it’s small, that’s OK. Don’t despise your small beginnings, because all good things, even all good big things start small. 

When I was a new principal, I wanted so many big and beautiful things to happen in my time at the school, but my little brother pulled me aside one day, and he was like:

Steven, you know what your motto for yourself should be this year? 

And I was like, no? What should it be? 

And he was like.

You should just say to yourself every day: don’t suck. Don’t suck.

And you know, if you’re not awful, that’ll be a good start. And if you’re bad at anything, don’t worry about it. Just say to yourself the next day: try and suck less. Suck less.

He was being cheeky with me but I kind of appreciated his advice. 

We don’t need to be heroes. We just need to try. Trying is a beautiful thing, friends. It’s so good to try. And when we try, God will meet us there, because God doesn’t despise small beginnings. God smiles over them. So we can too, friends. 

God loves every good beginning, friends, even little ones.

And secondly, friends, I encourage you to: trust the slow work of God.

1. Trust the slow work of God.

One of my first bosses when I was young gave me a lot of terrible advice. I won’t repeat it here, but he did. He actually published a couple of books, and recently I wrote a dissertation – a super-long graduate school paper – and I cited one of his books, only to tear it apart a little for its negative insights. Maybe kind of petty, but it was sort of healing for me.

Anyway, though, this same boss wasn’t just full of terrible advice. He gave some good advice too. And one thing he told me, and told our whole division, was he said several times that most of us overestimate what is possible in one year, but we underestimate what is possible in five years.

We overestimate what is possible in one year. Like we want big beginnings, fast change, dramatic growth, and it’s not usually possible, or not sustainable. 

But most of us don’t bother setting our hopes out several years and wondering about what just might be possible with new efforts, steadiness, and a long time. 

There’s a beautiful poem by a French priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, who lived a hundred years ago. Kids – sidenote – but wouldn’t it be cool if you had a pastor who mostly studied dinosaurs in his spare time. Well, that was Teilhard. Anyway, here’s his beautiful and very wise poem. 

Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Oh, friends, none of us knows anything about what tomorrow holds, let alone the whole rest of this year. And sometimes our big hopes will come true quickly and sometimes they will take a very long time. 

So friends, I pray that you can accept the anxiety of feeling yourself just as you are today, in suspense and incomplete, and that together, we can trust the presence and kindness and the slow work of God. 

And the last thing I want to say today is a simple thing about this slow work of God and a couple of simple prayers that I think can help us when we’re starting new things or really anytime. 

I want to remind us, friends, that God is here for us. 

God is here for us. 

 

The Bible’s happy little letter of Philippians ends with a lot of great advice, including these lines:

Philippians 4:5-7 (Common English Bible)

5 Let your gentleness show in your treatment of all people. The Lord is near.

6 Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks.

7 Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus.

I love the reminder that in a world where there’s a lot of meanness and cruelty, gentleness and kindness are still good. That’s what God is like after all. 

And then there’s this helpful line about the anxiety we can feel with new things and hard things. It sounds like we’re being commanded to never feel anxious. Like someone saying:

Don’t. Be. SCARED!

Which is probably the best way to make someone scared, right? 

But I don’t think that’s it. I think we’re being given a pathway through our anxiety and a way out of it. And one way is to tell God our feelings and our needs and to notice what we’re thankful for too and to tell that to God as well. And then see what God can do with all that. 

There’s a structured way to do this – it’s called the daily examen. I’ve taught about that other times. But I try to pray this way every day – to notice what’s good in life and notice what’s hard, to notice my feelings about all that, and to say thank you to God and to ask for help. 

And there’s a lot I don’t understand about prayer, but I do know that this gives me peace. It’s really simple – tell God your feelings about your day, say thank you, and ask for help.

The other prayer is even simpler. It’s just when you’re not sure what to do next, to ask God for a good next step. 

There’s another famous part of the Bible that says:

Proverbs 3:5-6 (Common English Bible)

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart;

    don’t rely on your own intelligence.

6 Know him in all your paths,

    and he will keep your ways straight.

And like the other passage, there are ways of reading this one that sound like they’re insulting people, or making God seem kind of mean or controlling.

But I think these lines are just admitting that we don’t know what to do a lot of the time, and we lose our way pretty easily. And that we need help, and that God is glad to help us. 

So I find there’s a prayer for us here. To pray:

I don’t know what the future holds, God. And I don’t know which way to go. But I bet you have some good ideas for me, God. Help me find a good way forward, God. What’s a good next step for me?

Praying this way isn’t magic. It doesn’t give us a God-sized perspective on everything all of a sudden. But it helps us remember God is with us and God is good, and helps us be open to new ideas for good steps forward.

Friends, whether you’re starting a new school year, or a new lease, or new job, or new anything, I hope you’re remember that:

• God loves all our new beginnings, even our small ones.
• That we might be in a rush, but we can trust the slow work of God.
• And that God is here for us, and ready to meet us in our simple prayers.